Episode 133: Creating Generational Wealth Through Passive Income With Jim Briggs
Jim began his career as a ship builder and welder for the Nashville Bridge Company. He then joined the United States Air Force and was selected into an elite group of the USAF nicknamed the Walking Airforce aka “Global Survival Instructor” today known as SERE. After leaving the US Air Force, he entered retail. He was responsible for new store openings, hiring, departmental development, training and merchandising. Transitioning to a sales career, he was a regional sales manager responsible for a four state territory for a global concern. Later, he entered the automotive industry; starting in sales. After leading the sales team for 6 consecutive months was promoted to manager of finance and insurance. Quickly progressed to general sales manager which led to him becoming a general partner in automotive franchises representing Chrysler Plymouth Dodge and Lincoln Mercury.
Mr. Biggs has held a professional license in real estate, licensed as an agent in the state of Florida's Department of Professional Regulation, presided as President of Chesterfield HOA, held an insurance license and a Series 6 Securities License with the Department of Professional Regulation in Illinois and is currently a Managing Broker for the State of Indiana. He is a member of the National Association of Realtors, belongs to the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association, National Real Estate Investors Association, Northern Indiana Creative Investors Association, Chicago Creative Investors Association, Chicago Real Estate Investor Networking Group, The National Multifamily Housing Council, NMHC, as well as several other community and professional associations. His newest venture is The GOB Network of Apartment Investors, an open source, democratized all inclusive platform for apartment investors to source deals, partners, capital. The platform also provides coaching, mentoring, teaching and access to partnerships as GP, KP, LP, JV and other creative deal structures.
Get in touch with Jim:
bit.ly/JimBiggs
Jim began his career as a ship builder and welder for the Nashville Bridge Company. He then joined the United States Air Force and was selected into an elite group of the USAF nicknamed the Walking Airforce aka “Global Survival Instructor” today known as SERE. After leaving the US Air Force, he entered retail. He was responsible for new store openings, hiring, departmental development, training and merchandising. Transitioning to a sales career, he was a regional sales manager responsible for a four state territory for a global concern. Later, he entered the automotive industry; starting in sales. After leading the sales team for 6 consecutive months was promoted to manager of finance and insurance. Quickly progressed to general sales manager which led to him becoming a general partner in automotive franchises representing Chrysler Plymouth Dodge and Lincoln Mercury.
Mr. Biggs has held a professional license in real estate, licensed as an agent in the state of Florida's Department of Professional Regulation, presided as President of Chesterfield HOA, held an insurance license and a Series 6 Securities License with the Department of Professional Regulation in Illinois and is currently a Managing Broker for the State of Indiana. He is a member of the National Association of Realtors, belongs to the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association, National Real Estate Investors Association, Northern Indiana Creative Investors Association, Chicago Creative Investors Association, Chicago Real Estate Investor Networking Group, The National Multifamily Housing Council, NMHC, as well as several other community and professional associations. His newest venture is The GOB Network of Apartment Investors, an open source, democratized all inclusive platform for apartment investors to source deals, partners, capital. The platform also provides coaching, mentoring, teaching and access to partnerships as GP, KP, LP, JV and other creative deal structures.
Get in touch with Jim:
bit.ly/JimBiggs
folks this week on the pre-real podcast we're joined by Jim Biggs, Jim is the founding partner of Jiroma Enterprises and is also the founding member of the Gob network uh Gob network is is a network Jim's trying to launch and get off the ground that is basically a free network where he's pulling investors together of all different skill levels uh people that are interested in in being GPS KPS LPS JVS you name it uh he's put together an interesting Network there and he's trying to provide folks with a hack to get to the actionable item of investing in the deal now uh it's a fascinating story it is a lot of great information in there and uh Jim Jim just ended up being a hell of a guy so try not to miss this one folks Jim Biggs on the pre-roll podcast are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level my name is James prendamano I'm the CEO and founder of pre-real and over the past 25 years I've closed over a billion dollars in transactionable real estate make a meeting with outstanding investors High performing individuals and Visionaries operating in the real estate space these are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now getting it done this podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level this is the pre-real podcast welcome everyone to the pre-real podcast so we're joined this week Folks by Jim Biggs Jim is the founding partner of Jiroma Enterprises but he's also the founder of the Gob Network and I'm I'm fighting back a smile because we we've been able to spend a few minutes offline before we started to record here and I'm not going to get into a big lengthy introduction here because I want this to to flow organically I've immensely enjoyed our time already Jim thank you very much for taking the time and joining us today James thank you so much for having me and it's a real pleasure to be here today oh the pleasures hours and and I'm thrilled to be able to share this with the audience folks you you those who have listened uh and we're so appreciative to those who have listened to each episode as they drop as we've grown beyond what I ever imagined was possible sometimes you have a guest on and in the first few minutes you just feel a connection you feel the authenticity and uh strap yourselves in folks because I think we're going to have a hell of a show here Jim why don't we start with uh let's go back to the beginning you you were a shipbuilder and a welder for the Nashville Bridge Company uh this was not a a path in life that uh I would assume at that point in time you weren't thinking about the Gob Network and all of the experiences you had to go through to get to your why and your passion for founding the Gob network but let's talk a little bit about life back then when you're with the National Bridge Building Company sure uh I was orphaned at a young age and grew up in orphanages and Foster homes and uh really never had an example of what it meant to be successful or go to college I didn't even know anyone that had gone to college or had owned a business and so I was really raised in a very with a with a poor mindset and to be honest I probably still have that little more hillbilly boy mindset but uh I went to work at a National Bridge Company because I felt an obligation to support a new family that I had started so I dropped out of school in the 11th grade I went to work as a welder Apprentice at Natural Bridge Company and um and shortly thereafter uh joined the United States Air Force uh was supposed to go in um into their Hydraulics program and instead got recruited in basic training to be a build a survival instructor and so I did that uh and very shortly like a year into it uh was injured during training Maneuvers and had to leave and was felt that that was you know at that point the worst thing it ever happened in my life because basically I was a big boy scout I love the outdoors love uh being uh alone in the woods I had kind of grown up that way so I was really disappointed and had to make a big transition in life so first of all thank you for your service um from what I understand that's an an elite niche of folks in the Air Force is that correct yeah today it's known as uh the Sierra program and so we are the special forces of of the Air Force so every branch has a special forces uh and that's the Air Force and we basically uh train flight crew whether it be pilot Navigator whoever's on the plane um in all the other branches of the service uh how to survive if they get shot down and so it's our job to train them escape and evasion uh type tactics uh and how to survive with you know basically uh whatever came out of that airplane with you so the parachute and whatever is on your person wow so your loving what you're doing at that point it sounds like you're you're an Outdoorsman and this had to be fulfilling on some levels for you um that you probably didn't even understand at that point you get hurt this had to be devastating uh where where do we go from here what's the mindset then and what was the next step well I didn't know where to go uh as a young kid and I never had a thought Beyond you know most of us don't grow up with a plan in our head uh whether we grow up or Rich most of us don't have a plan for life life has a plan for us and we just kind of go along and and we try to bounce from one side of the hallway to the other but trying to keep moving forward and uh so for me um I had a friend when I came back home uh they actually uh I went back to work for a company that I worked for in high school because I've worked since before I was old enough to work I've had a job probably since I was 10 years old um and so during High School I always had uh two jobs um one two jobs in the summertime and then one during school year because uh I I was an athlete so I I couldn't hold down two jobs um and um so I went back to work for that company they sent me to Chicago to uh and basically elevated me from what I was in high school and was opening up new stores for them and one of my very good friends at the time was working for a national concern as a regional sales manager national sales manager and hired me on uh as his partner and so I basically left that job and became a national sales manager and then did that for about a year and then him and I decided to open up our own business and that was the beginning of me uh becoming an entrepreneur and for the better part of my life I've owned a lot of different businesses and and that was kind of the the beginning of that most of my entrepreneurship most of my business ownership has been in new car franchises and businesses that were closely related to that so we've owned several National brands that today uh are conglomerated under the Chrysler Banner so back then they would have all been individual franchises and also under the Ford Motor Company franchise we had Ford and Lincoln Mercury or I'm sorry uh yeah Ford Lincoln Mercury and Jeep Eagle franchises uh Chrysler Plymouth and Dodge franchises over the years and always had a used car lot attached to those uh in addition so we've been in several Partnerships with those and have exited several of those so considering the background uh school was not a natural fit for you it wasn't for me either uh you you you're in Special Forces at incredibly Elite level you transition into uh car sales and and dealership launches uh you know where where was the influence or or where did the connection come to go from that to the founder of the Gob Network which by the way folks uh for those not familiar pushing 11 000 doors in that Network 1.3 billion dollar uh valuation uh I mean we're talking about a massive Endeavor that has become a passion project for you and we'll get into that but where's where's the leap from from this to this completely different you know career path uh so I don't know why uh what kind of lit my uh my intellectual uh entrepreneurship not physical but intellectual entrepreneurship uh somewhere along the line I was not a good student did not like school was a a bad kid a troubled kid uh always in a lot of trouble but uh one of my coaches uh first coaches that recruited me to start playing sports and gave me an Avenue to release a lot of my internal anger also uh basically taught me to read I I was basically illiterate uh and uh but in teaching me to read uh eventually started introducing me to some books that most of us are familiar with um you know I read a lot of uh of self-help books and inspirational books and you know odd mandino was a a an influence Zig Ziglar was an influence and you know the richest man in Babylon and all you know all of the all of the uh books that most of us are familiar with and so I think that kind of lit a fire somewhere that I didn't even realize was uh smoldering and which is uh why I started out uh you know in in all these different business ventures but before I got involved in those the thing I kind of skipped over was I when I got out uh of the Air Force and came back home I thought uh that I wanted to be a real estate investor and so I I didn't know how to do that there was no internet uh in and I wasn't the best at researching a library um so I thought well the has to be the best way is to to get a real estate license surely that's you know the real estate expert and I did that and quickly realized that all I I was was a salesperson I wasn't an investor and um before that could really go anywhere um again was recruited uh and offered uh you know a six-figure income to go open a business with a friend of mine and I was a young dad and had a uh you know a wife and family to support and I was making zero dollars being a salesperson in real estate which wasn't what I had thought I was going to do and so obviously I I left that and went uh and opened the business and that became a pattern in my adult life and every time I uh exited one of those businesses uh I'd go running back to real estate and and I'd go looking for a mentor or a coach to catch me up so to speak and help me fast track the five years I just lost you know in this automobile franchise business so I've always had a keen interest and one of the things we realized when we would exit a dealership is that we made more money on the real estate than we did on the business and that kind of you know I'm I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed I I described myself you know I'm not a racehorse I'm a mule or a donkey you gotta you gotta repeat something over and over and over again for me to learn but that uh it stuck and I and I realized deep down and I think that was one of the things that kept driving me back to real estate and and I obviously had a an unknown passion for it and that's been there my entire life so a couple of times through the Journey uh departing from the real estate career it's how I started as a real estate agent and broker and we still have a brokerage here um but that's a tough path and as a young dad again I've I've been there it's scary as hell when you don't have that income so you kind of are jumping back and forth and actually leaving what is a a real opportunity for a pathway to Financial Freedom not time Freedom folks Financial Freedom there is a pathway there starting by getting a license and getting into the trading time for money which puts caps and typically guys like us end up feeling caged a bit over time in that pathway so when did you formally uh launch Jiroma when did that actually you know come into play and become all right this is what I'm going to do now and pursue this in a full-time way yeah so a couple of things to unpack there James one is I think it's very important for us to touch on the fact that um if you grow up or like I did or middle class or lower middle class upper middle class um you you're uh society and your family school everything around us teaches us to be a W-2 employee it teaches us uh to uh basically have a fear mindset instead of uh instead of an abundance mindset and it will for the majority of us if you're offered a good enough W2 job versus an unknown that might be your best path for life that might be your best path toward Financial Freedom um you know building a generational wealth and a passive income we won't take it uh fear fear our upbringing everything about nature will not allow most of us to take it there is a very rare few uh that uh that can live in that fear space or they have nothing to lose and they just jump into it but I always had something loose I've had a family you know since I was uh 18. and um so I've I've always had something to lose and and so that's why I bounce back and forth so many times but I started Jerome Enterprises I'm 65 and I probably started Jerome Enterprises uh in informally uh as um uh as a business that has transitioned many many times over my lifetime probably in the in the mid 80s but it's gone through many transitions so if you think of a company that starts out as one thing and becomes something else we've done that many many times and Jerome Enterprises today is primarily focused on raising capital so you you've owned uh and been a part of commercial transactions and real estate single-family residents you've landed now and primarily focused about 95 percent of the portfolio is focused on multi-family what is it about the multi-family that that kind of won the day for you um you don't need to be an expert um to understand it all of us have to have a place to live and we understand the fundamentals of that and that's why we 90 percent of Real Estate Investors get started in single-family and most of them stay there because they can understand they know what it means to buy a house in a good neighborhood and to fix it up and it's going to carry a certain amount of value in in forced appreciation if we keep the grass mode keep it painted uh keep it looking you know uh like the nicest house in the neighborhood we understand that uh and it's we oftentimes uh many of us and I'm I'm guilty uh we can have uh paralysis by analysis we feel like we have to be an expert before we can move forward and that holds us back also in addition to fear and and it's another version of fear and so for commercial and all these other things um it felt like I just didn't know enough and honestly when I got into multi-family uh the more I got into it I started feeling that again uh so but the fun fundamentally it was because I felt like it was easier to grasp for uh for someone uh like me you know I've never felt like I was particularly smart I just felt like I worked harder than everybody else I knew yeah well I certainly understand that that mindset um as you're going through this transition and your model is evolving and you're learning more through experience and through JV partners and mentors and capital partners and that's a beautiful thing about this business is for the most part people are are willing to help if you're willing to put the time in um and you you move through and land where it's hard to argue I mean there's there's a housing shortage in the country depends on who you ask and what study you read somewhere between four and six million units um there is significant opportunity in this space it is uh certainly inflation resistant where you can adjust your rents um I would stay fairly every year some are more aggressive than that but I think in a fair way every year you can recast and keep Pace um their while it is a a concept that I agree it's easier to to digest and and get in the mix on deals uh I caution people and we talked a little bit about this offline and I assume that's where this passion for Gob Network came from it's not as easy as everybody says it is to do this right uh I'm I'm going to assume this is a family show and I'm going to try to watch my language but that is a load of crap um there are very lucky people very blessed people um in this life and there's a reason they call them the the one percenters the two percenters um I I don't know what it is they have that's different from the rest of us but the the Tim ferrisses of the world can uh figure out how to do a four hour work week uh and uh there's a lot of other people that have have made a ton of money a lot of money and and look folks that's not gonna happen for you it's not going to happen for me uh it's just not realistic it's like being born and saying okay I'm going to be an NBA star I'm going to be a you know a football star it's just not going to happen for most of us you know if you want to get to where they are or some semblance you know be on the same island uh be on the same Cloud as as the Rolling Stones would say um you're gonna have to do it through uh Blood Sweat and Tears you're going to have to do it through hard work don't let anyone kid you this is an extremely hard job this is the hardest job I've ever had and I'm used to working extremely long hard hours as a as a business owner you know you're you have to be available 24 7. and uh don't get me wrong I I love it I love what I'm doing and that's why I'm willing to work as hard as I do but for most of us think of yourself this is the way I think of myself uh if I have a picture a mental picture of my life and I think this is true for most of us it's Hercules pushing that boulder up the mountain and imagine the mountain is not uh you know a solid uh Granite phase but instead it's it's very loose it's Gravelly it's uh you know dirt gravel and uh the boulder is not tiny it's so big you can't see around it on the left or the right or above you and so you don't know what is ahead of you in that path you don't know how close to the summit you are or how far away you are and every two steps you take forward that bowler is going to push you back one step and sometimes you're going to take two steps forward it's going to push you back five steps but as long as you keep pushing then you're going to make progress and that's been my life I am very very fortunate to be where I am I'm lucky but some of that luck you make through hard work and by saying yes to Opportunities and in Having the courage to overcome your fears now I don't I don't believe that everyone uh should just I'm not saying haphazardly go out and disregard all the responsibilities you have in life what I'm saying is be very focused on what you're willing to sacrifice and take calculated risk and move forward you know risk all of your Starbucks money risk all of your going out to dinner money risk uh your vacation money risk anything you can risk to get what you want out of life and to do what you have a passion about doing you know don't put your family here risk and if you're listening to this and you're young enough not to have a family and a lot of other obligations go all in man go all in if I could change any one thing in my life I would have never taken that six figure income when I was in my early 20s I would have stuck with real estate and today you know uh instead of being a millionaire I'd be a billionaire and uh I'd you know I'd be the guy that uh every I am I surround myself with as many people that are smarter and richer and and much further ahead of me than I am and I I consider myself to be the lowest wrong on that ladder and if I had stuck with this for 40 years I'd be at the top of that run so you're clearly have a passion for what you're doing here and I want to spend some time on the Gob Network you describe it as the democratization of coaching mentoring deal making uh in in the commercial real estate space let's get the folks up to speed what exactly is the Gob Network so uh I've spent uh 40 years buying mentorships and educational platforms and masterminds uh because every time I'd exit a business I felt like I was behind and I needed to catch up I need to accelerate I needed to join forces with an expert and uh most of the time I'd spend you know 30 grand 40 grand 50 Grand 100 Grand to join these different programs and masterminds and um so many people enjoying these things I I'm going to say 90 of the people that do that will not succeed yeah and do not succeed and unfortunately we're in an industry where a lot of people are making most of their money not in real estate investing but on educational platforms and trying to teach people how to do this and if I had all the money that I had spent over a lifetime I could buy a huge apartment complex just with my own money and never need to do anything else for the rest of my life it'd be enough to retire on um and it granted I don't need to retire as a billionaire I'm very happy living you know a modest lifestyle but I'd be able to retire easily and I had I've had a lot of successes in my life but I've had even more failures and it's just lucky for me that that that mountain is always you know two steps forward one step back is is always a little progress so I'm not I'm not saying uh you know I don't want to say the wrong thing here but I'm grateful for the mentorships I've been in and I'm grateful for the masterminds and I am a strong believer in the concept but I also believe that for most people if they would have taken that money and put it in a deal Not only would they be much further ahead but it's almost a guaranteed success where putting it into the program is almost a guaranteed failure and the ownership of a business which when you buy an apartment building or a home and you're not living in it's a business the ownership of that business will be the best teacher you'll ever have I cannot personally Mentor you no one can personally Mentor you and teach you as much as that business will not be not Tony Robbins not Brad some rock Rod Cleef not Neil Bowen not anyone can teach you as much as that business will teach you and one of the big things about it is it will be brutal when you're not doing things the right way it'll take money out of your pocket it'll keep you up at night it'll call you at three in the morning it'll take you away from your vacations it will be relentless in punishing you until you get it right or you give up but when you do get it right you'll never get the kind of praise and support that that business will give you your Mentor will never send you a check for twelve hundred dollars every month your Mentor will not give you generational wealth but that business will so the business will be the best attaboy you've ever had and encouragement to keep moving forward and do more of what you're doing the right way and it'll also and this is the best thing honestly it'll punish you brutally because your Mentor just can't do that if if you're a drill sergeant you can punish me and and berate me until I am ready to quit but if I don't quit you can't keep that up that's not in human nature to to be that mean and punishing to people forever but the business has no conscience it'll punish you forever as long as you keep doing it but your coach will not your coach will eventually 99 of them will will give up on you and say hey this just isn't for you this guy just doesn't want it bad enough this guy you know you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink you know and that will be the mentality of most of your coaches after a period of time and that's why 90 of people fail in this business and so I that was the Genesis of starting the GOB network is I wanted to turn the educational um uh platform the educational mentoring piece of this business on its head I wanted to turn it upside down and do something that broke the Paradigm and say to you look put your money in your deal don't put it into my mentorship so I founded the Gob Network as a non-profit so that we give you everything that these programs give you and teach you how to do this but encourage you to put your money into the deal not into the platform so we will never collect a penny that isn't in direct support uh in in of that program of teaching people how to do this and because of that we're not going to need you know 50 Grand we just need enough money to keep the lights we just need enough money to to keep the content on a website and to making it accessible to you and and so and I I'm 65 I won't be around much longer on this Earth but I wanted this idea to be here for the next hundred years and so that's why I founded it as a non-profit because when I'm gone I want to make sure that this idea continues on without me and I don't want it to be about me and so I I want it to be about the membership you know I'm a big big believer in uh if you're familiar with terms like uh the hive mind or open source or um uh what's the other word I'm looking for I I'm losing it right now but um that idea of a community uh in in in several Minds being smarter than one mind and people having a passion and will do things um if you Microsoft is is the biggest uh platform uh in in the United States but it's not the biggest platform in the world Linux is and most of the world and even in the United States what most people don't realize is most of the big big platforms and companies run on Linux and windows is just a face Microsoft is just the face and Microsoft is a huge multinational corporation and most people know that the founder is you know filthy Filthy Rich nobody knows who the founder of Linux is because he doesn't make any money off of it because it is founded as an open source Network it's free to anyone who wants to use it now several people will go in and take that and build around it and change a few pieces and change the color and and and charge for it you know but for the most part Linux is open source and what I love about that is that if you have a brilliant idea you're a programmer you have a brilliant idea at Microsoft but uh you're on a a project and your project is to do a but you've got all these ideas how to make the whole project better when you go to work they're going to tell you look that's nice but you've got a job to do and at five o'clock this afternoon I want that on my desk and so you feel frustrated you feel locked you feel like you you can't escape your your creativity is smothered so if you go home at night and you're a programmer you know about Linux what are you going to do you're going to go Implement those ideas on Linux and in Linux eventually becomes stronger and better than anything in the world in the beginning Microsoft blew it away because Microsoft had hundreds of paid programmers and they had nothing but volunteers but in the long run if you look at things in the future it is impossible for Microsoft to compete because everyone that goes home frustrated will build what they want to build in Linux and you'll have eventually millions of programmers compared to thousands and so that's what we're trying to build within the Gob network is a membership driven platform that is uh has a a hive mind and we want people to keep their money in their pocket and be able to find everything that they need to find in one resource and help them build some generational wealth help them get to where uh to be as lucky as I am you know to be able to travel the path that I've traveled in the journey that I've traveled and lift themselves up uh out of whether they're lifting themselves out of poverty or whether they're list lifting themselves up out of a drudgery uh you know they say 80 of people hate their nine to five so if they're just lifting themselves up out of that to follow their passion you know we want to Service uh we say underserved communities but that that's a loaded word that doesn't mean just poor communities it does but it doesn't mean just that it could be the next Bill Gates of the world who's frustrated and with what life is trying to hand him and wants to build a Microsoft and so he goes into his garage and does it we want to provide the resources for that creativity and for that frustration and also for those underserved people so uh and if I could boil it down in my words what I I think I'm hearing here and some of the observations that I've made uh over the years the the masterminds and the groups uh I have found two completely different experiences so at one point in my life they were useless to me uh I went to them I attended them I logged in I you know followed what I was supposed to follow but the mindset was not correct I was not in a place where the the most important you know space in the world was what lies between your ears I was paralyzed by fear I was paralyzed by all sorts of negative emotions for a Litany of reasons and I found every excuse and reason to not be intentional in what I was doing and it's it's really easy especially in this world today where they are uh just pounding into our heads that you're not accountable for anything everything is somebody else's fault it's easy to when you're feeling uh disenfranchised and you're feeling you know down on yourself it's easy to buy into that [ __ ] right so absolutely for a period of time that was my experience once I got my mindset right it was a total 180 there was significant actionable items that I took away from those groups and I was able to put them into play in real time and I started to see immediate results what what you're doing here I think is you're trying to give access to these tools and you're trying to say to folks hey you don't have to take your money and put them into those types of groups you're never going to learn uh what you need to learn through a group the way you will if you go through a deal if you're a part of a transaction so you're encouraging folks to to join this group and instead of putting that 10 20 50 100 000 into masterminds and groups put them into deals like let's let's go if you're gonna go let's go and this is a place where you want to provide people all of the tools where if they need to tap into them they can but the idea is to go is that correct yeah absolutely uh the the reason it's Gob get on board you know let's we have a what we call a Goya Challenge and I named it Goya for get off your ass and get on board Let's Take Action this group is about trying to push you toward action as opposed to taking your money and that's the primary difference between what we're doing in every other educational program out there is doing we don't have a profit mode now me personally I have a profit I have a huge profit on it but that Network my profit motive is not education my profit motive is real estate how can we get you into real estate deals and selfishly look I'm not Mother Teresa I I didn't start this with the intent of of uh of riding off into the sunset and just doing my my good deeds at the end of my life I have an ulterior motive which is I the one of the hardest things in this business is to find good partners and partners with the SREO and for you know so the people that don't know what that is in multi-family you have to have a strong SREO in order for a bank to loan you money and that's schedule of real estate owned it's your resume of uh of what you've done and and gives the bank the assurance that you can do it again and so it's your experience and then you also have to have a balance sheet and most people getting started in this don't have a balance sheet which is another reason they start off in in small single family and so you have to have a strong balance sheet and then in addition to that you have to have very strong liquidity meaning you've got to have a lot of liquid cash hundreds of thousands of dollars uh in the least to get started in multi-family and and as you grow millions in liquidity and again 98 of people in this nation don't have it and so it's almost it's it's a barrier to entry that cannot be overcome for most people and that's also one of the reasons a lot of people will go into a mentorship that's why I always went into over and over and over again I've joined dozens of them and over my lifetime and uh my reason wasn't to learn it was always to find those those things the experience the SREO the liquidity and the balance sheet that's always why I joined but they promised that and I've I've not been a member of a single one that ever delivered on it so it's still up to you there's there's what I call the the goose that laid the golden egg if you join a mentorship program like that and they have a lot of of uh millionaires in the program they don't just hand you the list of their email and phone so that you can call them and say hey I've got a deal you want to partner with me it's up to you to get in there and get your hands dirty and you're going to have one by one by one have to meet them and so I found that uh you can do that without joining the membership you know you don't need to join the membership to do that but it's still an uphill battle it's very very hard and so one of the key components of the Gob membership was to give the goose that laid the golden egg away for free so our membership when you join it's a closed membership uh you can only join by invitation and one of the reasons is is that every member has to provide their email address and uh mobile phone number and the reason for that is we want to make partnering and and overcome that obstacle overcome we want to try to help overcome as many obstacles to success as we possibly can and to create as many shortcuts as we possibly can and so that is the biggest single biggest component is access to people's uh information so that you can call and say Hey you know you're in my neighborhood and I've got a deal or I want to find a deal would you be interested in partnering and how can I help you and how can you help me yeah and so um that that's a key component so are you focused on bringing in you know Green horns newbies that have no real estate experience or uh you know rizzled vets like we are who are you looking to attract into the network so everyone uh we want this to become um if I could combine Bigger Pockets with every educational platform on every different aspect of Real Estate 20 years from now that's what I want this to be 40 years from now and so uh in the beginning its primary focus is multifamily because that's what I know the most about and that's where most of my experience is and this thing was built on me but very quickly uh I knew what I wanted it to be was I wanted every type of person on the platform so right now yes almost all of it is multi-family although we're starting to get um we have uh several investors this year that have started uh investing in in single-family portfolios we have several members that are doing RV parks we've got some members doing industrial but 99 of it is still uh apartment complex and multi-family and I made sure that we had several people like me on the platform that could be your sponsor that when you found a good deal you're still going to need a sponsor and the bank is going to require you to have a sponsor and so I made sure to bring people on the platform because I didn't want anyone to feel like they had to do business with me because uh I'm not everyone's cup of tea you know there's people are going to look at me and say you know I don't want to do business with that you know redneck hillbilly you know he he you know I wanted the Harvard Business graduate so I made sure to bring uh enough people onto the platform that uh can do what I do and it's you know I believe in competition so I'll get my fair share of deals but they'll get their fair share of days and uh we just want to make sure that all the resources you need if you are brand new are there so we have everything from newbies that have no clue what they're doing to grizzled veterans that have done tons and tons of deals and uh and you know we make that available to everyone in the network and uh what you were referencing there is essentially you've brought a number of of KPS into the network so if you need a sponsor and you have a deal uh there's a number of different folks they could speak to and try and win their business when their their partnership uh through you know their their pitch yeah yeah and when you join uh we we um we have a vetting process